The product of a lifetime immersed in the literary, performing arts, and entertainment worlds, this collection of profiles by the former editor-in-chief of Simon & Schuster and Alfred A. Knopf, and editor of The New Yorker, spotlights the work, careers, intimate lives, and lasting achievements of a vast array of celebrated writers and performers, and public figures. Here are Robert Gottlieb's takes on Charles Dickens, James Thurber, Judith Krantz, John Steinbeck, and Rudyard Kipling; on the controversies surrounding Bruno Bettelheim and Elia Kazan; and on Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and her decades-long relationship with her editor Maxwell Perkins. Here too are Isadora Duncan and Margot Fonteyn, Serge Diaghilev and George Balanchine, Bing Crosby and Judy Garland, Tallulah Bankhead and Katharine Hepburn, Mae West and Anna May Wong.